Trump Claims Therapeutics Are "Working" Even as U.S. Continues to Break Coronavirus Case Records

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President Donald Trump claimed that therapeutics are “working” and lowering coronavirus fatality rates despite another surge in coronavirus infections across the United States.

“More Testing equals more Cases. We have best testing. Deaths WAY DOWN. Hospitals have great additional capacity! Doing much better than Europe,” he claimed.

More Testing equals more Cases. We have best testing. Deaths WAY DOWN. Hospitals have great additional capacity! Doing much better than Europe. Therapeutics working!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2020

The United States registered more than 80,000 new coronavirus cases yesterday alone according to data from the John Hopkins University Covid-19 Tracker.

The president’s tweet comes just a day after White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany denied that the White House has a “herd immunity” approach to the novel coronavirus pandemic as harsh criticism continues to mount over the Trump administration’s response.

President Donald Trump’s approach is “therapeutics,” McEnany said, “which by the way has given us the lowest case fatality rate in the world, far lower than Europe.” (This is false.)

Therapeutics are not available to all and many Americans face barriers to treatment due to high healthcare costs. The president himself was treated with therapeutics, namely Remdesivir and dexamethasone (a steroid that can trigger a host of psychiatric side effects) after he was hospitalized for Covid-19 complications earlier this month and faced criticism for receiving healthcare access unavailable to most American citizens.

The president also claimed that The New York Times admitted “that patients ill with Covid are getting better faster and at higher (much) percentages.” This is misleading.

The @nytimes now admits that patients ill with Covid are getting better faster and at higher (much) percentages.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2020

Although the Times reported that “survival rates, even of seriously ill patients, appeared to be improving,” this is as “the country is now averaging more than 75,000 new cases daily, the worst stretch of the pandemic by that measure” and “Deaths, which lag behind cases, remain far below their spring levels but have ticked upward to about 780 each day.”